Chief ministers: Richest to the poorest, Reddy to Banerjee
As per a report by the democracy watchdog, Association for Democratic Reforms (APDR), YS Jagan Mohan Reddy and Mamata Banerjee bookend the list of chief ministers of India from the richest downwards.
Reddy, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, has assets totalling a whopping Rs 510 crore, making him the country’s richest chief minister.
At the bottom of the list is Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee, having assets worth only Rs 15.38 lakh. She is also the only chief minister not a ‘crorepati’ (that is, a person having assets more than Rs 1 crore), underlying her well-known claim of modesty in living standards.
Above her are her Kerala and Haryana counterparts—Pinarayi Vijayan, with assets worth Rs 1.18 crore and Manohar Lal Khattar, with assets worth Rs 1.27 crore, respectively.
India has 30 chief ministers—28 from the 28 states and those of the national capital region of Delhi and the Union territory of Puducherry. It may be noted that Jammu and Kashmir does not have a chief Minister at present and from 2019, has been a Union territory.
The data suggest that except Mamata Banerjee, all the chief ministers are ‘crorepatis’, that is, have assets totalling more than Rs 1 crore.
Five out of the top 10 richest are from the north-eastern states—Arunachal Pradesh’s Pema Khandu (Rs 163.38 crore), followed by his counterparts from Nagaland (Rs 46.95), Assam (Rs 17.27 crore), Meghalaya (Rs 14.06 crore) and Tripura (Rs 13.90 crore).
The APDR also has some other interesting data: Among CMs with criminal cases against them, Telangana’s K Chandrasekhar Rao stands out with a total of 64 cases against him, including 37 serious ones.
The top three are all from southern states. Third in this list is India’s richest CM, Jagan Mohan Reddy, with Tamil Nadu’s MK Stalin in second place.
As for educational qualifications, while Assam’s Himanta Biswa Sarma is the only one with a PhD degree, Maharashtra’s Eknath Shinde is the one with the lowest qualification—class 10 passed.
